


platitudes

by helsinkibaby



Category: The Mentalist
Genre: 5 Things, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Community: 1-million-words, F/M, Het, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2021-01-02 13:42:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21162584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helsinkibaby/pseuds/helsinkibaby
Summary: Five platitudes Cho’s heard... four he disagrees with and one that’s not too bad





	platitudes

**Author's Note:**

> For the weekend challenge prompt “platitude here (wounding him to the bone)”

She dies in his dreams every night.

Which Cho knows is to be expected. He’s lost comrades before, lost friends before. In the army, he’s watched men die, has washed their blood from his hands more easily than he’s ever been able to wash away the memory. The dreams came then too, relentless and always the same, fading as the weeks went by. 

These dreams aren’t going away and unlike what the platitudes would have you believe, things don't always look better in the morning.

The details of the dream are always the same - him and Vega side by side, walking into the latest diner in a long list. Vega, spotting the two men, one with a lift in his shoe. Guns drawn, the pop as they were fired, the screams of the other patrons, his heart pounding along with his footsteps as he runs after the fleeing suspect first, then back to the diner. 

He smells her blood, feels her heavy in his arms. Sees her eyes fill with pain and fear. Hears his own voice, begging her to stay with him, to breathe...

He wakes up with her ragged breath in his ears and he wonders if this time isn’t worse than the others because, unlike his army buddies, she actually survived. 

*

“It could have been worse,” seems to be the prevailing platitude around the office and every time he hears it, it cuts Cho to the bone. 

Sure, he knows they’re right. It could have been worse. They could have been organising flowers for a funeral rather than a hospital room, he could be looking for a permanent rather than a temporary replacement. 

But it doesn’t change the fact that in his first op as Boss-in-Waiting one of his people almost got killed. 

He’s seen men die, sure, but always when they’ve both been following someone else’s orders. It’s never been on his say so. 

It’s never been his fault. 

*

“It’s not your fault.” 

Cho lifts his head from his book to see Vega, no longer as pale as the hospital sheets she’s lying on, staring at him. He hadn’t even known she was awake. 

For a second he consders playing dumb, acting like he doesn’t know what she means. Only for a second though. She’d never let him get away with it. 

“You got shot on my watch,” he points out and she actually rolls her eyes. 

“I told you before, you’re not responsible for me,” she says and he’s back in the office suddenly, outside a conference room as she argues her way into an off the books operation that could have ruined all their careers. “It was nobody’s fault. Just bad luck.” 

Cho presses his lips into a non-committal line, makes a noise that he hopes she’ll take for assent and leave it there. 

But this is Vega he’s dealing with, so no such luck. “Cho.” Her voice is gentle, almost pleading and it becomes more so when her hand shifts, then flattens on the sheets. Almost like she was reaching out for him before thinking better of it. Then, softer still, “Kimball.” 

She’s never actually said his name before, he realises, and it sends something of a shock through him. One look at her and there’s definitely more colour in her face, a flush of pink high on her cheekbones. “It’s not your fault,” she tells him again and he feels himself nod. 

“Okay.” 

*

Cho has never been one for going with the flow. Back when he was running with the Playboys, he learned very quickly that deviating from a plan would invariably lead to disaster, usually involving a house call from the cops and more tears from his mother. In the army, changing plans had never been an option, he was given orders to follow, a job to do and he executed those orders without question. In the CBI, in the FBI, his reputation is that of a straight shooter, with the acknowledgment that even if he broke the rules thanks to one of Patrick Jane’s harebrained schemes, he still followed the plan to the letter. 

So when he finds himself spending more and more time with Vega as she recovers from her injury, he tells himself that he’s still following the rules. She’s his agent, his protégée of a sort, he feels responsible for her. He’s just doing what any good almost-boss would do. 

He’s doing the same thing when she’s released from the hospital and long conversations on a very uncomfortable chair become even longer conversations on her far more comfortable couch. 

He doesn’t think anything of it until the night that she looks across at him, lips stretched in a smile as laughter bubbles from them and suddenly all he can think is that he wants to kiss her. 

That wasn’t in his plan when he came over tonight but he does it anyway. It’s a brief kiss, over too quickly, but when he pulls back, her pupils are blown wide, his hands are in her hair and hers are on his chest, pulling him close rather than pushing him away. 

“We shouldn’t have done that.” Her voice is shaking and he just nods. 

“I know.” 

Then he kisses her again. 

She doesn’t object. 

*

On paper, he knows there are a million reasons why they shouldn’t work. Chief among them is the fact that they work together, that he’s her boss. There’s also the fact that he’s over a dozen years older than she is, that while he was a teenager stealing cars with the Playboys, she was literally learning to walk. 

All that may be true, but when she slips her hand into his and smiles up at him, it doesn’t seem to matter. And it certainly doesn’t seem to matter in the dark of night when she wraps herself around him, her smile pressing kisses along his skin. 

Age, Michelle tells him, is just a number. 

Cho thinks about how close they came to not having any of this at all and decides she’s right.


End file.
